Week 03 - Futeristic Weapon Assignment

In this assignment we were asked to design our own original futuristic gun.

I first looked into already designed guns for inspiration. I'm not very good with machinery as I usually draw bladed weapons so I looked for designs which would help me understand the mechanics a little better. The scythe and sword are both two weapons in one so I was thinking of maybe designing a weapon like that so that I could draw something in my style.

After getting together some pictures I started sketching out some ideas. I wasn't sure which direction to go as I had found so many very different designs. I made a rough of most styles to begin with before realising I had a blue pencil so I coloured in some plasma.

Using this I made a rough design for a plasma gun.

As I was designing this blaster to be very powerful, I gave it a stand to lean on so that it could be used as a sniper. I tried thinking of how it would look when being used.

I didn't like the way it looked so I decided to make it a two-handed, carryable gun.

The way I had sketched the front of the blaster it was at an angle but the rest was in side-view. I had already started painting so I had to edit and deform the back half which meant the angle was 

Week 03 - Walking Simulator Planning

Before making our walking simulator, we first had to come up with an idea. I couldn't really think of anything straight up so I decided to brainstorm so that I could organize all the ideas a bit.

I wrote down everything I could think of and picked out some I liked coming up with the idea of a horror game based in a school where you wake up in an empty classroom and have to search the school before finding out you are actually dead. I didn't like the sound of this idea as it seemed too typical so I carried on adding to the mindmap before coming up with a completely different idea.

This is the final idea I came up with. It's a very simple idea but I thought seeing everything much larger might be interesting. I researched for a faerie name and found the name Nissa which I like.

I had already started planning a bit of the previous idea on the top half of this page but stopped and started with the new one. I sketched out some of the scenes and interactions I'd like to include as well as the rough size I would like the character to be.

I made a simple storyboard to help give structure to my idea. I wasn't entirely sure how every step would go but this started me off.

I made a map in birds eye view as it is based in a home and it is easier to see this way.

I then made a 3D map of the main room and the path you would be taking to help me when I get round to making it.

Week 03 - Life Drawing

In this life drawing session we drew a lot more than previously.

 

We started with five 3 minute sketches to warm up.

 

 We then drew with an outstretched arm with large, flowing movements. We had 5 minutes for each pose. The drawings on the left were drawn first using my right hand. The one on the right was drawn in the same style but with my left hand. I really like how this style looks and is a good way to quickly draw a pose while learning the way the body flows.

 

We were asked to choose which one we liked most and which one we liked least and write why. We then all went around the classes and wrote if we disagreed with any of the others choices.

Next we tried drawing with only the side of the charcoal spending 10 minutes on a pose. We went around again to look at others work and were asked to try again using another style. Both times my work was recommended which was really nice. I really enjoyed doing this as I hadn't had much time in the other sketches to add shading. For the second picture I would have preferred having a softer piece of charcoal to make darker marks.

 

 Lastly we tried drawing to different styles of music, one slow piece and one loud rock piece. I didn't have much to work with in the first pose as the rest of the models body was covered so I added detail to the hair as which worked well with the flow of the music. The second piece was slightly harder to focus on due to the music and I didn't get the shape of the body right.



Week 03 - Elf and Dwarf Body Proportions

In this lesson we looked at proportions using heads for measurements. I knew about this scale but never really used it before.

We had a scale of nine and a half head for an elf and only four heads for a dwarf. As I've mentioned before, I haven't had much practice with drawing digitally so while I have drawn people for some time, I found it very hard to draw in my usual style and keeps all the proportions correct while zoomed in especially as you can't see the whole image.

These are the characters I ended up with in the end. As I draw tall females often, I didn't find the elf too difficult. The dwarf however felt strange to try fit into only four heads.

Week 03 - 3D Column

 In this week's lesson we made a 3d column using reference.

 This is the image we used. We used it as a texture on a plane so we could model next to it.

 

This is the model I made. Some parts are off which I didn't realize until after I had made it such as the indents on the ends which are too deep. This was good practice for me as I'm going to be using columns in my arena, though these are Greek style so I would need to make them slightly differently.

Week 02 - Crustacean Character Silhouettes

Following and online tutorial on YouTube we were asked to design three crustacean inspired creatures. I have never used the silhouette method before or had much practice painting on Photoshop so this was especially difficult.

I began by searching for any weird and interesting crustaceans as well as some anatomy pages to help me design something as realistic and believable as possible.

Following the tutorial I started blocking in some characters using the features in my mood-board. It was very difficult to imagine what to draw without adding any details.

I then stretched and distorted the characters to improve their shape and made them lighter at the top to help colouring as well as scribbling some highlights to give me a bit of shape to work with.

I then went in to adding details. It was hard to get used to as I had to build on the layers (though I did it all on the same layer) instead of working your way in from an outline. I wanted to create different creatures with opposite looks. The first one is designed to look like a human though if you look closely there aren't really many human features. The second one I spent most time on as I wanted to try another painting method. I saw that a lot of crustaceans have dots over there skin because of the shell texture so I tried to imitate this. This is also the one that looks closest to a normal crustacean but it is my favourite. The third one is actually the one I designed and painted first. It is very dark as I wanted a dark one colour shell but because of that there isn't much detail. The one thing I really like about it is the weapon as the sketchy style and design looks good.

Lastly I moved around and re-sized  the creatures so that the shapes fit together better. I then added a colour layer with some colours inspired from the pictures I found. I am still not used to colouring like this so I don't like how bright and solid the colours came out, especially the blue, but as I had dark characters to begin with, there wasn't much I could do.

I later went back on Photoshop and played around with the levels and changed the background to just simple grey patches.

I enjoyed this activity even if it was difficult for me but I'm sure I will use it again.